Poison - Jade West Page 0,57

becoming the invalid who needed to take care of herself and stop taking any risks or living any kind of life for herself.

“But it wasn’t just that,” I said. “It wasn’t just the epilepsy that hurt so bad. It was more than that. The seizures had already started before you left me, they were in the sickness and those weird feelings of déjà vu and everything they told me was stress. It was more than my brain and the bullshit it sparks when it feels like it, it was the pain of losing you. And everyone knew that. Everyone knew what you did to me. Everyone knew how much I loved you and how much you’d broken me into the mess of who I was before.”

“You’ve been having seizures that long?” he asked, and his voice was as broken as mine.

I nodded. “Yeah. They’ve been better and worse, but they’ve always been there. They helped loads with the lamotrigine, and Sebastian tried to help by controlling everything I did, but they never went away. Not completely.”

We sat for another round of silence, both of us staring at the carpet between us and trying to find our thoughts. We were both lost and knew it. Both broken and knew it.

I had no idea how the hell we would ever find the way up from that spot on the floor, both of us stuck in this pit of pain. Neither of us tried to attempt it, just sat and breathed.

Sat and breathed and cried.

Sat and breathed and remembered just how hard the whole sorry wreck of our life was in the aftermath.

“Did you love him?” he asked me. “Did you love Sebastian? I thought you were happy. People said so.”

“I was trying to love him,” I said. “I thought I did, and I wanted to, and I was so grateful for everything he was being to me.”

“That’s what I was doing with Maya,” he said. “I was trying to love her, and wanted to love her to at least drag some scrap of good from the carnage. And she was trying so hard. Trying so hard to make me love her.”

I nodded. “Sebastian was good to me. If I had any sense, I’d love him back and would still be there.”

“That’s what my mother is telling me about Maya.”

“But I can’t,” I choked. “I can’t love him, because he’s not you. I’ve never loved him like I loved you.”

“And that’s what was happening with me,” he choked back. “I can’t love her, because she’s not you. I love Millie. I love Millie more than life, but I can’t love Maya, and she knows it. That’s why the trying so hard turned into so much spite. Because she knows I don’t love her, and she wants to punish me for it, and I don’t blame her, not really.”

I gave up at that point and let myself fall to the floor. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling, cried out of tears. And he joined me there, at my side, staring up at the ceiling along with me.

“What the hell do we do now?” he asked, but I didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know what we can do. Nobody will ever accept we’re together. My parents are still screaming for me to get back with Sebastian, and Nicola would slit your throat before she’d sit in your company.”

He sighed. “I wouldn’t blame her.”

Neither would I. She’d watched me through the very dregs and cried with me through every second of it.

“What about you?” I asked him. “Is Maya still trying to make it work?”

It took him a few seconds to answer. “She says not. She says she’s done and over and never wants another night with me, but my mother says that’s bullshit and I should be busting my gut to make it right again. Mother says she still bleats on about the destiny of souls having a higher purpose together every time she gets five minutes.”

“Do you want to make it right again with her?”

“No,” he said, without even a hint of a pause. “I hate how I’m away from Millie, and I hate she uses it as a weapon, but I don’t want another shot at it. I think it does Millie more harm than good to see us together like that. Unfortunately, my mother doesn’t agree with me.”

“This is tough,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Yeah, it’s fucking tough. It’s a fucking joke how fucking tough this is.